The Role of the Mobile Network Operators in Emergency Notification         and Critical Event Information Dissemination

​

In 1992, the GSM committee created the GSM standards with many bearer services, in order to make the system future proof. Their foresight has proven so advanced that it has taken 30 years to fully appreciate the wisdom of the committees’ actions, and to win the respect of all subsequent standards developers. 

Specifically, the GSM engineers realized that there is a probable use-case for one-to-many distribution of some classes of information. The same Brains that figured out SMS, also realized the need for a complementary (not competing) technology that could achieve super-scale passive dissemination of machine-to-machine as well as human-to-human data to targeted cell locations. ‘Cellular Broadcast’ functionality was included in the GSM standards to provide a perfectly adapted bearer service for situations for when a network may be required to deliver message data to an unlimited scale of terminals in a designated location, without affecting, or being affected by, traffic volume. 

This unique facility has survived all subsequent generations, and is now the enabling “Go-To” technology for providing ‘Government-to-Citizen’ mass-scale Public Warning Services such as the US Wireless Emergency Alert service, WEA, and the European EU-ALERT system. Without the insight that this capability was needed, and not currently possible, point-to-multipoint Cellular Broadcast Short Messaging Service would not exist. This contribution to public safety has made mobile telecommunications synonymous with effective emergency management. 

To be clear; the GSM committees are the ‘fathers’ of this revolution in mass emergency notification. Now that the feasibility, need, and demonstrative benefit of cell broadcast/multicast messaging has been well established, the GSMA has the moral authority to support its logical conclusion. 

The mission of ‘Project Gabriel’ is to facilitate this authority by expanding the availability and humanitarian benefits of cellular emergency information services to all nations and peoples as a standard global mobile messaging feature. This mission is of particular importance to the developing nations that have; high levels of vulnerability to the sudden-onset of disaster events, an expanding mobile penetration, and the need to provide 'At-Risk' populations with authenticated information, a capability that cannot be delivered by SMS or the Social Media. 

Regrettably, because developing nations lack a sufficient revenue base to acquire dedicated emergency messaging services, or to compensate the mobile operators for use of their assets, this critical communication tool is currently deployed in only nineteen nations. 

Project Gabriel was founded by the CEASA Working Group as a not-for-profit joint partnership to facilitate the development of a strategic solution to establishing Universal Public Service Emergency Notifications, UPSEN, as a commercially sustainable public service obligation feature of Global Mobile Telecommunications. UPSEN will utilize a pull-data portal system that will collect critical event CAP information, posted by; the World Meteorological Organization, WMO, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, and the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, ICMEC. This information will be cellular broadcast enabled, and forwarded to the networks for transmission. The UPSEN system and operator participation is fully funded by the imposition, or redirection, of Public Service Obligation Surcharges imposed on the mobile subscribers’ who are direct beneficiaries of the notifications. The surcharges are calculated to recover all implementation costs in year one, while providing the mobile operators with annual compensation for the use of their infrastructure and spectrum assets without legislative mandate. The projected universal surcharge amount will be determined by, and paid to, the participating GSMA operators. The projected surcharge base-rate should not exceed $0.10 US per subscriber, per month. No additional operator or government investment will be required.